


One For The Road

by chewsdaychillin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Goodbye Kisses, Jealousy, M/M, Past Relationship(s), as in canon, canon typical martin pining, canon typical tim trauma and anger, deep delve into the tim/martin history, not suicide ideation really but tim is ready to go down swinging, pre-unknowing, tim is sooo mad at jon in this nsdsbriueb, tim stoker pov, very angst fr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:40:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23218654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chewsdaychillin/pseuds/chewsdaychillin
Summary: ‘Um. Tim?’ Martin’s voice is saying. ‘Can I borrow you for a sec?’(goodbye kisses as the van leaves for Great Yarmouth. rating is for flashbacks to previous relationship, present day action is pg)
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Tim Stoker, and jon/martin but just pining
Comments: 32
Kudos: 152





	One For The Road

**Author's Note:**

> whos ready to hurt over tim stoker ! again ! me !

The heavy duffle smacks down on the metal floor of the van as he drops it off his shoulder and Basira sighs behind him. 

‘What?’ Tim asks her, schooling his voice away from a petty snarl. 

‘You’ve got to Tetris,’ she says, pushing past him and unloading the bags scattered and thrown in. ‘Honestly, you lot work in archiving, don’t you? Can’t you organise one bloody boot?’ 

Daisy chuckles as she comes within earshot. She lugs two big black peli cases that look like something out of a spy movie off the tarmac and into the boot like they’re nothing. 

Tim steps back and lets them get on with it. They’ve decided to be a team so they’re a team, but that doesn’t mean they don’t half wind him up still, and he doesn’t actively  _ want  _ to start a fight before they’ve even set off. 

It won’t help his road rage. And it’s going to rain. The morning air is grey with it.

He leans against the side of the van and tries to ignore the sounds of shifting weight and the rocking against his back. 

Jon makes one unwise attempt at a suggestion but the two women shut him down with very few words, much to Tim’s amusement. 

They seem nearly happy with the packing when another pair of trainers come down the front steps and shuffle across the pavement. Tim tries not to look up, knowing who's nervous, heavy steps they are. 

‘Tapes,’ Martin says. He’s holding a shoebox - the one he’s labeled and goes round collecting with. 

The helpful, anxiously chipper note in his voice is familiar and used to be sweet. Now, when Tim’s already in a bad mood, and he’s talking about  _ tapes,  _ and he’s being helpful and nervous and sweet bringing boxes down for  _ Jon...  _ it’s nauseating. 

Tim doesn’t look round at the two of them, close under the hood of the boot. He hears Jon saying, ‘ah, yes, thank you. This is everyone’s?’ 

It’s not everyone’s. Tim’s is in the bottom of his rucksack. He hates the shoebox and if Jon wants it he’ll have to ask for it himself instead of relying on Martin to run his errands. Tim kicks the sole of his shoe petulantly against the wheel until he hears his name. 

‘Um. Tim?’ Martin’s voice is saying. 

He looks up, moves away from the van. Martin’s hands are clasped together in the front pocket of his hoodie, weighing it down. The strings are uneven and he’s been chewing on one of them. 

‘Can I borrow you for a sec?’ He asks. ‘Just. One more box upstairs.’ 

It’s a lie but he’s quite good at them, it turns out, even though he looks very small. 

‘Sure,’ Tim says, ignoring the twitching frown on Jon’s face and the girls’ raised eyebrows. 

‘Satnav says we need to be gone by nine,’ Basira reminds them.

Tim rolls his eyes, already leading the way back inside. ‘One box,’ he calls back. 

He hears the van doors slamming as they step through the stone archway into the cool, dark porch that sets the front door of the institute back from the road. They huddle in behind a pillar. 

‘What, no box?’ It’s supposed to be teasing but he hears the bite. ‘Sorry.’ 

‘No, there’s no box.’ Martin sighs. ‘I just wanted... I, um.’

He shuffles, bumps his back against the stone a few times. He has the kind of obvious, kinetic worry that used to be cute. He’d do the same thing when Tim would throw him a line, back when they’d just started in the archives - shyly knock his shoulder on the shelves and um and ah and duck his head. 

It isn’t cute now. His face is drained of colour. 

Tim is going to help him out and start for him but he can’t find the words either. 

In his head, he isn’t coming back. He’s decided that, settled on it. He’s done  _ his  _ crying about it all. It’s decided now. Every time he leaves a room he’s saying goodbye in his head. He forgets other people are only just being hit with the realisation of it and doesn’t know what to say. 

Martin takes a big breath in and looks up at him. ‘Be careful? Won’t you?’ 

Tim can’t lie to him. ‘I’m not making any promises.’ 

‘Just don’t... just don’t run  _ towards  _ the killer clowns?’ 

Tim says nothing. It starts to spit outside the shelter of the old entranceway. 

‘You are  _ trying _ to come back, aren’t you?’ Martin asks, and still he says nothing. ‘Oh.’ 

There’s another pause and in the empty seconds Martin's hands slip out of his pocket. After some awkward twitching, he tries to take Tim’s hand. ‘Don’t you think Danny would-’

Tim jerks it back, not roughly, just minutely, but enough. ‘Don’t.’ 

He looks at the ground so he doesn’t have to watch Martin apologise. 

’Okay, sorry.’ A long slow breath. ‘Sorry.’ A tiny crack. ‘Sorry, just-’ 

Tim looks back up, sighs at the red around Martin’s eyes and takes his worrying hand in both his own. He squeezes it a moment. It’s solid. Alive, more than Tim’s felt in months. Hot and quick-pulsed like it’s still fighting not to die, hasn’t accepted it. Their hands always fit nicely. The first time he’d held it, walking back from the bathroom through a crowd, he’d thought that. They never needed practice. 

‘Please try,’ Martin says quietly, ‘for me?’ 

Tim sighs. The urge to promise whatever he needs to promise to slow the heartbeat in his hands is rising up. He knows Danny would have said ‘I’ll try’ if he was holding Tim’s hand and it was shaking like this, but it isn’t helpful to lie.  _ ‘I’ll try and come back’  _ \- what good is a promise like that if you go and get killed? Danny had had no control in that moment, promise or no promise. 

Tim still feels numb, like his own wrists are slow, nothing hammering against them. He’s been far away from the rest of them for a while, hand or no hand to anchor him. He is on the other side of an angry membrane and used to it. It is not easy but very simple to push the urge back down. 

He starts saying ‘I don’t know what’s gonna happen, Martin-’

Then there are fists clutching at his collar and a scared, desperate,  _ warm  _ mouth on his. 

The shock rocks him back a second on his heels, but he kisses back. Or pushes back, at least, gives the same pressure, the same fierce, heavy breath, into one long kiss, wanting it to be the same and maybe he’ll feel it. 

It used to be fun, light, flirty, flushing. The highest stakes being Sasha coming back from lunch early or an awful hangover the next morning. It isn’t that anymore. 

He misses the comfort of that pressure as soon as Martin goes, hands sliding onto his shoulders, down his arms, into his hands again. 

‘One for the road is it?’ He asks, grinning as best he can. 

At that point the diesel engine sputters into life across the road. A nagging, rumbling sound that makes Martin look past Tim’s shoulder at the van and ignore the joke. 

‘Bring him back with you, won’t you?’ He asks, and his eyes are firm and pleading. ‘If you do come back. Promise me you won’t just leave him.’ 

‘C’mon,’ Tim frowns, a weird mix of comforting and defensive, ‘you really think I’d do that?’

Would he? He wonders. He’s not considered a scenario in which he doesn’t go down swinging and Jon does. He clearly wonders a second too long, feels Martin's hands slipping away. 

‘Well, no,’ Martin is saying, fumbling, ‘But... I don’t know I just-' he sighs, lets his hands fall against his side. ‘I need him to be okay.’ 

Tim huffs without meaning to. ‘I know you do.’ 

He tries not to sound bitter but they stopped because of Jon. Martin would probably say it was more nuanced than that, but it’s easier to be bitter with a root cause, and they absolutely did stop because of Jon. 

Tim is used to sharing and he’s never thought there was anything wrong with casual. Fine, they weren’t exclusive. They weren’t  _ dating _ . At the beginning, when he’d know there was maybe someone else, it had been fine. And then when he’d known  _ who, _ it had been fine too. Maybe he’d been a bit jealous, but in a fun way. 

_ Him? _ He’d teased,  _ really? _ He’d liked the way Martin would roll his eyes and smack Tim on the arm and say ‘leave off!’. Liked the way he’d blush when Tim would play possessive - spin him round by the belt loop and kiss him against the counter while the kettle boiled. 

It wasn’t as fun after the worms, when all the stalking and paranoia started. 

It hadn’t  _ had _ to stop anything. Tim wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. They weren’t dating, but - 

‘I can’t watch you mooning over him,’ he’d said bitterly over the photocopier on a particularly rainy and paranoid day, and Martin had looked away from  _ his _ office door and into Tim’s face with a defiant defensiveness. 

‘I am  _ not _ mooning.’ 

‘You are.’

‘I  _ worry _ about him.’

‘Wish you’d worry about me that much.’ 

He hadn’t meant to say it really. It came out a resentful grumble but the truth in the words was a bit too vulnerable. The copier spat out paper between them. 

‘Of course I do,’ Martin had tried to reassure him, much nicer in tone than was warranted, as usual, ‘I worry about you too, Tim, but you really ought to talk to him-'

‘No, I’m talking to you.’ 

‘I can see that.’ 

Tim had said nothing. He was aware he felt bad, but it didn’t seem to change the situation anymore. He hadn’t even said anything when he could see his words sinking in deeper. 

‘You  _ know _ I care about you,’ Martin had said, voice crawling, hands and knees. He hates people being upset. Hates them being upset with him. ‘Don’t be unfair.’

Tim had pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I’m not. Look, I’m not trying to stop you, I know we never said...’ (And they  _ had _ never said. They weren’t dating. But -) ‘But I can’t watch you give yourself away. I mean, for what? For nothing. I don’t think he even likes you.’ 

And he’d know that was mean. He’d meant it from care, and months and months later he knew how he should have phrased it.  _ I worry he’ll break your heart and I like it better whole and I think I deserve it more.  _ And he knows now what he’d needed, what would have calmed it and let him say it in the right way. 

He’d just needed that attention. Another deeper layer under jealousy - he’d needed the tea and the worried cooing and the affection. And Jon never even noticed it, didn’t deserve it. It made Tim furious, for himself, because he wanted it,  _ wanted _ it to get him through being stuck in this evil shithole of a job. 

And it made him furious for Martin, who ought to have attention too, if he were only any good at taking it.

Tim’s lucky enough to know he’ll take it in the evenings - let Tim properly lavish him with it, walls down and neck arching on the pillow. Let compliments and affectionate fingers shower over him, his wanton mouth open and red towards the ceiling, saying it’s good, saying Tim is so so good at this. (Tim loves hearing it and always has but Martin doesn’t know that so it still counts as selfish in the best way. It isn't a gift.) 

He’ll take it in the moments just after, when his breathing’s still hard. Won’t squirm and pat away the quick kisses peppered on his jaw and nose and forehead like he does in the daytime. But he gets shy after the afterglow. 

‘Are you sure it’s okay if I stay?’ He’d asked almost every time. And Tim had spread out on his chest and told him not to be stupid without any meanness. 

At the copier what he’d said was something mean. 

‘Right,’ Martin had gathered up his photocopies, trying to keep his chin up whilst looking at the floor. ‘Well. Don’t watch then.’ 

And he’d stormed off, which was new. But Tim knew him well enough to know he’d been crying when he came out of the kitchen twenty minutes later. Somehow Tim still hadn’t apologised, the numbness of an anger starting to become a habit weighing him to the desk.

At least Martin had had the grace to put mugs down on Tim and Sasha’s desks before he’d gone into Jon’s office with one in each hand and the copies under his arm. 

It seemed unfair - still seems unfair - that one mean thing was the line under their relationship, whatever it had been, while Jon seemed to never miss an opportunity to be rude or snarky or fucking creepy and yet never seemed to push it too far.

(‘There’s a walk in centre nearby-’ Martin had worried even in the face of an obvious lie.)

Tim knows now it’s too late to do anything about it. And it’s not his job to do anything about it. But on his long list of things to be angry with Jon about, he has to put ‘will inevitably break my friend’s perfectly good and selfless heart’ high on the list. Just above ‘will probably get to kiss said friend if he makes it out of this alive and wakes the fuck up to the obvious’. 

He’s a little bit angry at that still, too. 

But behind the pillar of the entrance way, and now, he supposes, his exit way, of their shitty job, with the spit of wet London damp on his back, he decides he doesn’t want to be angry with Martin. 

‘Okay,’ he says, shrugging, training his mouth out of its frown. A promise -  _ I won’t take it out on us.  _

‘Okay?’

‘Yeah.’

Martin smiles, breathes out relief, looks lighter, and Tim wants to comfort him. Oh. It’s been a while since he’s felt something like that. 

‘You’ll be alright,’ he says, an assurance he has no power to make, but it feels nice to run his hand up and down Martin’s very real arm as he says it. 

‘Yeah, no, I’m fine,’ Martin tells him, shaking off the burden of being worried about as he usually does but leaning into Tim’s hand. ‘I’m not worried for  _ me.’  _

‘It’ll work, though. And,’ Tim says seriously, wanting to make him hear that he’s serious, ‘you’ll be alright.’ 

‘Yeah.’ 

The car horn honks and they both jump. 

‘Twat,’ Tim scowls. 

Martin allows him a smile. ‘In his defence, Basira is the one in the driver’s seat.’ 

‘Fine,’ Tim smiles too, but he looks down and scuffs his trainers against the flagstones. 

Martin looks round at the van again, at its hazards flashing impatiently. He says ‘right then,’ valiantly covering his shaky inhales with the tone of a knee slap when it’s time to go. 

Then he pulls Tim into a tight hug.

‘Be safe,’ he mumbles into Tim’s chest, head ducked, ‘I mean it.’ 

Tim settles his arms around Martin’s shoulders, lets his chin rest on the top of his head. ‘I know you do,’ he says quietly, this time without bitterness. 

‘Pass on the message, yeah? I want you all to be okay.’ 

Tim highly doubts he’ll actually pull Jon for a  _ ‘Martin says ‘please be okay’ and ‘come back’, also he’s in love with you and you’re an idiot if you don’t do something about it’ _ chat, but he says ‘Sure.’

He knows he has to go. He knows this is it but it’s hard for the knowledge to sink into a numb surface however much it weighs. 

It’s a strange combination of things to know all at once: 

To know that everything’s over whilst knowing how he feels in bed, or up against a filing cabinet. To know the broken little noises he makes with a teasing hand between his beautiful, trembling thighs. To know he has a vinyl collection and hates cooking. How he folds a page when he forgets his bookmark. That he wakes up with dry drool on his cheek. How he reaches and grabs for things to hold when he’s coming - Tim’s hair, hand, the headboard. 

And to know the way he’s holding Tim now, know it familiar and warm, where their arms rest easy, whilst knowing this is the last time they’ll do it. 

Tim lets himself be held, be squeezed tight like he doesn’t need air. He feels solid and  _ there _ . 

When the car honks again he doesn’t jump, just tuts and unwinds his arms. The nagging reality of the deadline is starting to set in now. As they step back he looks at Martin more actively than he’s looked at much in a while, committing him to memory. 

The sun is coming up and peeking past the smooth stone into his hair, mussed and staticked a bit from Tim’s chin. 

‘So,’ Tim says, dragging the vowel out like a sheepish schoolkid, ‘Can I have one for the road then?’ 

Martin pulls him down with two gentle fingers hooked into the V of his collar, kisses him without the desperate pressure, all soft, mouth open only enough to sigh through. 

And Tim crosses his wrists behind Martin’s head and lets himself melt. It feels like a goodbye kiss and he wants to  _ feel _ it, sharp through the dullness. He pushes his hands into soft hair and holds it, not tugging, not rough, just feeling the texture of it, real and drying. Martin hums and slips his tongue in softly and God it’s still good, he’s still good at it, still tastes good. 

But it isn’t fun anymore. It’s not the teasing it used to be before they’d see each other tomorrow. It’s sweetness is only concern and bitter loyalty. 

Tim’s breath is too hard, mouth humming as they accept the inevitability of their lips giving way, like elastic at breaking point. They drop apart. He manages to turn it round to teasing. To shake out one last line. 

‘Want me to pass that on too?’ 

Martin smiles, goes a bit pink and strokes his cheek. ‘No,’ he replies, ‘no you can keep that one.’ 

His hand slips down to Tim’s chest and presses there, in the centre, pushes slightly. Giving him permission to step away. 

Tim tries to smirk, huffs a little laugh in response. ‘Cheers,’ he says. 

And he goes. Back into the open, down the steps backwards, throwing out a cheeky wink as a barricade against the more dangerous salty blinks. 

It’s drizzling now and he lets it hit his face and neck and wet his hair. Blame in on the rain. 

‘Where’s that box then?’ Daisy asks when he slides into the back seat next to her, tone either teasing or chiding, he doesn’t care which. 

(Jon’s up front with the Satnav - no one’s sure how much of a joke it is that he’s in charge of knowing the way.) 

Tim just glowers at her as he plugs in his seatbelt and she shrugs and turns away. ‘Suit yourself.’ 

Basira starts the engine and swings the van around. Tim doesn’t look back but in the rearview mirror he sees Martin getting smaller on the step, waving them off. His reflection is too small to really see it but Tim knows his eyes are red, cheeks are fading red, and hair cowlicked, messy from Tim’s hands.

His mouth twitches fondly and he thinks about waving back, but then he catches movement in the corner of his eye, catches Jon waving into the wing mirror. He decides to leave it. His outstretched fingers curl into a fist.

**Author's Note:**

> i didnt plan this as part of a series w my angsty jontim in the b&b fic but..... i apparently cant stop adding to the jtmcu and it is a double dose if u read that way according to my beta bae @lesbian-moon lmao 
> 
> thanks for reading everyone xxx scream in the comments or @ me on tumblr im babyyodablackwood x


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